FYI – Winnipeg Free Press

SHELDON WECKER
Helene Wecker's pacing is spot on.

New in Paper

1 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

A Thousand Farewells

By Nahlah Ayed (Penguin, $18)

THE former Winnipegger's memoir takes us from her childhood in a Palestinian refugee camp to her experiences as a CBC foreign correspondent.

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Christians to offer apology at Gay Pride Parade

John Longhurst 3 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

"I'm sorry."

That's what a group of Winnipeg Christians will be saying from the sidelines on June 2 during the annual Gay Pride Parade.

"Christians have caused a great deal of harm and alienation for people in the LGBT community," says Jamie Arpin-Ricci, pastor of Little Flowers Church in the city's West End and organizer of the Winnipeg I'm Sorry campaign.

"As Christians we have done wrong, and we want to say sorry," he says. "This is one way of making an unqualified apology and publicly committing ourselves to do better."

Vatican spokesman attending St. B diocesan gathering

Brenda Suderman 4 minute read Preview

Vatican spokesman attending St. B diocesan gathering

Brenda Suderman 4 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

After a solid month of wall-to-wall press briefings and media interviews during the resignation of one pope and the election of another, Father Thomas Rosica might be forgiven if he never wants to speak to another reporter.

But the experience of being the English spokesman for the Vatican press office during 30 crazy days in February and March has convinced Rosica of the value of more contact with journalists, not less.

"It forged a new relationship with the media," Rosica says in a telephone interview, referring to the intense international media coverage during the papal conclave, which resulted in Jorge Mario Bergoglio being elected Pope Francis I on March 13.

"The key to doing all of this is that it's part of a bigger picture, which is evangelization."

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Paul Haring / Catholic News Service
The experience of being the English spokesman for the Vatican press office during 30 crazy days in February and March has convinced Father Thomas Rosica of the value of more contact with journalists, not less.

Guys who cry

By Don Marks 8 minute read Preview

Guys who cry

By Don Marks 8 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Real men don't cry -- a least not in public.

Not so long ago, that was the maxim.

You look at old wartime leaders such as Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or hockey heroes such as Maurice (Rocket) Richard and Gordie Howe, and there's hardly a wet eye in the bunch.

Flash-forward to the crocodile tears we see pouring out of Wayne Gretzky and the public weeping of such modern politicos as George Bush, Bill Clinton and John Boehner and we see a huge change.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

CP
House Republican leader John Boehner fights back tears on election night in 2010

Overheard

2 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Rob Ford: T.O. superhero

'Maybe he's cleaning up the city by smoking all the crack in it. You're next, prostitution rings.'

-- Daily Show host Jon Stewart, weighing in on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's crack cocaine-video scandal.

One true thing

Looking for a Lincoln

By Aaron David Miller 10 minute read Preview

Looking for a Lincoln

By Aaron David Miller 10 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

WASHINGTON -- Six months after winning an impressive reelection, Barack Obama finds himself in some kind of trouble -- battered by semi-scandals and bombarded by foreign policy challenges he can't possibly manage.

Long gone are the hopes and aspirations expressed on the National Mall that historic January day when his supporters hoped -- and his detractors feared -- that he would become a truly transformational president. It turns out that restoring Americans' faith in their nation's institutions and transcending the partisan rancour of recent years is easier said than done.

Ask me to sum up Obama's presidency in mid-2013, and here's what I'd say: He has been a historic but flawed president who managed to end America's two longest wars and helped the country avoid economic collapse during some pretty scary times. Consequential, yes. Great, no.

Obama could yet recover from this bad patch. Fortunes can change quickly, particularly over the short span of one term. And judgments of a president's legacy can also change significantly over time -- though that hasn't been the case for most of Obama's 43 predecessors.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

MCT
U.S. President President Barack Obama.

Crave some pizza? Hit print

By Amrita Jayakumar 5 minute read Preview

Crave some pizza? Hit print

By Amrita Jayakumar 5 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

NASA can send robots to Mars, no problem. But if it's ever going to put humans on the Red Planet, it has to figure out how to feed them over the course of a years-long mission. So the space agency has funded research for what could be the ultimate nerd solution: a 3-D printer that creates entrees or desserts at the touch of a button.

Yes, it's another case of life imitating Star Trek (remember the food replicator?). In this case, though, the creators hope there is an application beyond deep-space pizza parties. The technology could also be used to feed hungry populations here on Earth.

Texas-based Systems and Materials Research has been selected for a $125,000 grant from NASA to develop a 3-D printer that will create "nutritious and flavorful" food suitable for astronauts, according to the company's proposal. Using a "digital recipe," the printers will combine powders to produce food that has the structure and texture of, well, actual food. Including smell.

The project -- the details of which NASA plans to finalize this week -- was presented at the Humans 2 Mars Summit in Washington this month. At the presentation, Anjan Contractor, an engineer at SMRC and the project manager, explained how the idea originated: He had used a 3-D printer to print chocolate for his wife.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

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Flower power

By Russell McLendon 3 minute read Preview

Flower power

By Russell McLendon 3 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

As humans scour the Earth for energy, venturing farther offshore and deeper underground, a new study suggests the answer has been under our noses all along. Rather than chasing finite fossils like oil and coal, it focuses on Earth's original power plants: plants.

Thanks to eons of evolution, most plants operate at 100 per cent quantum efficiency, meaning they produce an equal number of electrons for every photon of sunlight they capture in photosynthesis. An average coal-fired power plant, meanwhile, only operates at about 28 per cent efficiency, and it carries extra baggage like mercury and carbon dioxide emissions. Even our best large-scale imitations of photosynthesis -- photovoltaic solar panels -- typically operate at efficiency levels of just 12 per cent to 17 per cent.

But writing in the Journal of Energy and Environmental Science, researchers from the University of Georgia say they've found a way to make solar power more effective by mimicking the process nature invented billions of years ago. In photosynthesis, plants use the energy from sunlight to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. This yields electrons, which then help the plant make sugars that fuel its growth and reproduction.

"We have developed a way to interrupt photosynthesis so that we can capture the electrons before the plant uses them to make these sugars," study co-author and UGA engineering professor Ramaraja Ramasamy says in a news release. "Clean energy is the need of the century. This approach may one day transform our ability to generate cleaner power from sunlight using plant-based systems."

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

PAPER CHASE: Grant helps Bergen write new novel

By Bob Armstrong 3 minute read Preview

PAPER CHASE: Grant helps Bergen write new novel

By Bob Armstrong 3 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Need, poverty, greed, love and grace come together in a new novel-in-progress by Winnipeg's David Bergen.

Bergen has received a major arts grant worth $20,000 from the Manitoba Arts Council this spring to work on City of S., a new novel about an itinerant, a prostitute and a detective in a mid-sized Canadian city, known as the city of S.

After taking inspiration from Saul Bellow for his 2010 novel, The Matter with Morris, Bergen appears to be reading another heavy hitter of American letters these days. One of the characters is compared to Cornelius Suttree, from Cormac McCarthy's early novel Suttree.

Besides Bergen, MAC has announced that its 2013 major arts grants have gone to performance artist Grant Guy, artist-curator J.J. Kegan McFadden and folk singers Keri Latimer and Nicky Mehta.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Energetic, lucid Black still praises Nixon

Reviewed by Garin Burbank 4 minute read Preview

Energetic, lucid Black still praises Nixon

Reviewed by Garin Burbank 4 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Ever since his fall from the heights of the newspaper publishing world, Conrad Black has shown a voracious appetite for literary achievement. Long historical biographies of American political leaders have become his intellectual passion.

In this thick new volume, which covers an even larger U.S. canvas, he writes with boundless energy, graceful lucidity, considerable learning and unremitting hostility to the U.S. justice system (the "prosecutacacy") that imprisoned him. An introduction by Henry Kissinger assures the reader that Black understands all the complexities of "balance-of-power" diplomacy.

In spite of its subtitle suggesting foreign policy as a main theme, Flight of the Eagle is, for the most part, conventional political narrative emphasizing the succession of presidential administrations and great debates in the national councils. The strength of his method is to show how politics at home shaped U.S. relations beyond its borders, especially in the 19th-century attempts to fix or expand those borders.

Black is at his best in finding majesty in moments of national crisis: Lincoln embattled in the Civil War, strangling secession, moving to abolish slavery, and being embraced by adoring freed slaves in Richmond; Franklin Roosevelt staving off the worst of the depression by novel governmental intervention to provide social security, and then gradually bringing a reluctant people to face an overseas war against Hitler.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

CP
Conrad Black has voracious appetite for literary achievement.

Avec les monstres

Sabine Tr©gou´t de La Libert© pour le Winnipeg Free Press 3 minute read Preview

Avec les monstres

Sabine Tr©gou´t de La Libert© pour le Winnipeg Free Press 3 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Professeur de litt©rature anglaise et de cin©ma l'Universit© du Manitoba, David Annandale est avant tout un passionn© des monstres. Il est aujourd'hui le seul Canadien ©crire des livres pour le jeu Warhammer 40,000. Son dernier roman, The Death of Antagonis raconte une des histoires de ce jeu de figurines de sciences fiction.

"Warhammer 40,000 est un jeu qui a ©t© cr©© en Angleterre par Games Workshop il y a environ 25 ans," explique le professeur francophile. "C'est un jeu de guerre avec des figurines qui repr©sentent des robots, des soldats ou des extraterrestres. On est dans un univers de science-fiction tr®s noir ou l'avenir lointain, c'est la guerre."

The Black Library, la maison d'©dition de Games Workshop, s'est lanc© il y a une quinzaine d'ann©es dans la publication de romans de science-fiction qui s'inscrivent dans cet univers. Une trentaine d'auteurs contribuent aujourd'hui cette aventure.

"J'ai commenc© travailler pour The Black Library lors d'une comp©tition de sc©narios," raconte l'auteur. "L'©diteur a aim© mon id©e, je l'ai ©crite et j'ai continu© leur proposer d'autres choses. Aujourd'hui, c'est eux qui me donnent des id©es de projets qui sont tous tr®s int©ressants. Ils me demandent, par exemple, d'©crire un roman sur un personnage pr©cis, mais je ne suis pas du tout limit©, c'est une porte ouverte l'imagination."

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Humanity will survive, even as things ‘get weird’

Reviewed by Wendy Sawatzky 3 minute read Preview

Humanity will survive, even as things ‘get weird’

Reviewed by Wendy Sawatzky 3 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

When U.S. science journalist Annalee Newitz, founding editor of the science website io9.com, set out to write a book about the future of humanity, she expected to find the end was nigh.

Instead, her research led her to believe the opposite: that "humanity has a lot more than a fighting chance at making it for another million years."

The optimistic result is Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, a refreshing pop-science book that examines ways humans could prevail at Armageddon.

What does humanity's future look like? You might be surprised: Newitz, who is based in California, thinks it looks like Saskatoon.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Humanity will survive, even as things ‘get weird’

Sky-high balloons anchored to earthly history

Reviewed by Vanessa Warne 4 minute read Preview

Sky-high balloons anchored to earthly history

Reviewed by Vanessa Warne 4 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

One might be excused for thinking of a balloon in the sky, its basket high above the horizon, as a uniquely distant and detached thing.

After all, a launched balloon seems above and apart from the grind of daily life. Falling Upwards, a fascinating new history of the dangerous early days of balloon flight, challenges this notion. Its author, British academic Richard Holmes, is intrigued by pioneers of ballooning and by their journeys to hazardous heights.

His accounts of these journeys show that balloons are best understood as tethered to earth, sometimes literally but always figuratively. Connecting ballooning to a wide range of political, technological and cultural developments, Holmes reminds us that balloons are anchored to history and that they bear the significant weight of the needs and desires of the innovative societies that built and launched them.

Holmes is a biographer who specializes in the Romantic era, the age of Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth. His recent bestseller, The Age of Wonder, won Britain's Royal Society Prize for science books, appealing to a wide readership with its engaging discussion of connections between literary and scientific developments. Holmes takes a similar approach in this book; his ability to mix the cultural and the scientific is on show throughout.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

MCT
Richard Holmes tells engaging tale of balloons.

Anything seemed possible, even talking to the dead

Reviewed by Mary Horodyski 4 minute read Preview

Anything seemed possible, even talking to the dead

Reviewed by Mary Horodyski 4 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Canadian writer Claire Mulligan has based her compelling historical novel on the strange but true story of three American sisters who were avatars of the 19th-century's popular spiritualist movement.

In 1848, Maggie and Kate Fox, two girls living with their family in a sleepy town in New York State, played a mischievous nighttime prank on their mother.

Using a system of rapping sounds, the girls showed they could communicate with the spirit of a dead pedlar buried under their house.

One spirit led to another, and under the skilful management of their ambitious older sister Leah, Maggie and Kate took their show on the road, offering demonstrations of spirit rappings and becoming famous and wealthy in the process.

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Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Faith Briefs

4 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

Announcements for Faith Briefs must be in our office by Monday, 4 p.m., prior to the intended date of publication. Due to space restrictions, publication is not guaranteed. Please post information on website: http://wfp.to/events

-- The Art of Manifesting (Bringing Abundance Into Your Life) Spiritualist Fellowship Church, 300 Arlington Street at Portage Ave., every Monday until May 27, We will discuss and demonstrate Fundamentals of the Spiritualist philosophy, mediumship, and spiritual healing, Spiritualist Fellowship Church, 204-222-0071, $40.

Engaging story has hope for human nature

Reviewed by Joanne Epp 3 minute read Saturday, May. 25, 2013

ON the last day of Christmas holidays, an 11-year-old boy in Montreal finds out his parents are splitting up.

Hurt and bewildered, he prays to the sky to help him. The next day an ice storm begins. The boy, his family and their neighbours find their lives permanently altered by the devastating ice storm of 1998.

This first book by French-born Montrealer Pierre Szalowski is a lighthearted novel with a touch of magic realism: the boy (who's never named) believes he caused the storm, and his friend Alex eventually believes this, too.

First published in French in 2007, it's now being released in English in Canada and the Anglophone Canadians will have the odd experience of reading a story, set in Canada, told in British-inflected English -- for example, translator Alison Anderson, apparently an American, uses "face flannel" for washcloth, "mobile" for cellphone and "flatmate" for roommate.

December 23, 2024

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